Irina Brook’s nationality is the theatre. An artist who is equally at home in theatres on both sides of the Atlantic, who has directed at the Théâtre du Soleil and the Avignon Festival and won France’s most distinguished directing award, the Prix Molière, yet whose first language is English, she finds moving between languages, cultures and theatrical forms as natural as breathing.
She was born into a theatre family. This in itself is not ­particularly unusual for successful theatremakers, but the theatre family Irina Brook was born into (she is the daughter of director Peter Brook and actress Natasha Parry) is rather special and highly cosmopolitan. Irina Brook’s approach to her father’s legacy is refreshingly uncomplicated. She has had no inhibitions about tackling the same plays as her father and on those occasions when she has done so – such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Tempest – the results have been strikingly different.
Irina Brook will create a new English language production of Peer Gynt specially for the Salzburg Festival with a typically international ensemble from a diverse range of performance backgrounds.
In order to offer a broader perspective on the work of Irina Brook and the remarkable skills of some of her actors, we will also be presenting visiting performances of her production of La Tempête. This is a richly comic version of Shakespeare’s last great play, recasting Prospero as a magician in the kitchen, the owner of an Italian restaurant. Performed in French by a cast of just five actors, it uses circus skills, slapstick and clowning to create a fresh and lively interpretation of this moving story of a father and daughter, of magic, the power of the elements and of revenge. The evening is a magnificent display of physical acting and virtuoso timing.